


A Amicus Ad Amatum

by scorpionmother



Series: Seize the Night Chronicles [4]
Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Family, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Letters, Loss, Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 03:06:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7557721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpionmother/pseuds/scorpionmother
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The letters of John Clare to Vanessa Ives written after the events of Carpe Noctem and mentioned in Et Super Sponsas Mortis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Amicus Ad Amatum

**Author's Note:**

> Huge kudos to my dear friend Oerbalzalith for giving me the opportunity to add to the series and trusting me with his story and his original characters.
> 
> This is a companion piece to the Seize the Night Chronicles

My dear Miss Ives,

I cannot tell you, although I am sure in fact you know, wherever you now call your home, how many times I have sat, put pen to paper, only to stand hours later my back stiff with nothing more than a salutation written. Words that for so long came unbidden to me, flowing like water, tumbling in an outpouring from lips and pen were halted, seeming to be nothing more than an insipid reflection of what I was feeling, what I still feel although half a year has passed since I lost you. But I find now, finally, that the grief has eased just enough so that I can turn them into some semblance of words. 

Your sacrifice and death was a mutilation of the very essence of goodness and for so long how I lived since that moment it is impossible to say, except I did not; the most I did was exist. For how could I live without that that sustained me for so long; a century long in fact although to one such as I what is the passing of years? Your friendship and dare I call it love was the one constant in a forever of torrid change. Denied the one thing I longed for, acquiescence from mankind I clung childlike to your acceptance in vain hope that others would follow. Yet the world continued for so long to be cold and unwelcoming to one deemed by others so monstrous, despite the flicker of a promise of tolerance in each new decade that past. That I dared to dream, to keep hold of that hope I remember you once told me made me the most human man you’d ever known, and whilst your gracious soul inhabited this cold world, I could still believe. And eventually, once my twisted visage became more acceptable to humans, even pleasing to them and I finally gained what I’d longed for, without your presence on the earth, without your warmth and light I find I care nothing for it. Because in that moment of your demise, I realised it was no more important than dust, nothing more than a childish dream crushed under the footsteps of an adult reality. The fact that as I was, you had loved me and accepted me, the scarred abomination that I was, belittled any other affection subsequently made.

To say your loss left a void is like saying that without the sun there is no light or warmth. Everything changed and became less; the food and drink I placed into my mouth, the very air I forced into my lungs. They became nothing more than meaningless pursuits of an existence that I barely tolerated, that had become empty in so many ways. How many times did I consider an exit, a way to end the pain that consumed me like a ravening beast? I can see your eyes now, that quirk of your eyebrow, that challenge deep in the eternal blue of your eyes, the way your mouth stretched wide when you were amused. And yet immortal as I am, as I was rebirthed, an ending was not impossible, nor is it yet – as you know Miss Ives better than anyone, in that space between the worlds, nothing is impossible. 

But you, you goddess took that possibility from me too. You stripped me bare, ripped the very fabric of the system of belief that I had enduring built over a century; that without you I was utterly alone, by granting me with the very secret longing of my heart. By giving me a family. How I railed against you in those dark, early days. My love tempered by equal hate for you and what you’d subjected me to in equal measure was an exquisite torment. The agony of your loss, the fact that I would never again raise my eyes to your beautiful face filled by the need of your daughters for a mentor, soothed by the want of your lover for a friend. And you knew, did you not Miss Ives that I could not turn from that need, from any of them because you knew the very nature of my soul and what it yearned for. The creation of a family bound to me bone deep by the outflowing of your sacred blood.

And so I remained, I stayed to, however I was able, heal their suffering with my own. To become in some vague way a link between the past and the present of each of them to you. And what of that family you left behind? I will not, cannot hide from you their pain but I do not tell you this because I wish to hurt you in anyway. Your reasons were always your own, not for me to question and despite my despair at your passing, I truly understand why you did what you did. 

Mr Chandler, after his transformation, was for so long nothing other than broken. I watched him fight the madness of grief down the neck of a bottle and under the fists of nameless, faceless thugs provoked to allow him to feel any pain other than that that tore deeper than even his claws ever could. His anger, it was terrible to see. I worried for his sanity it seemed stretched so thin that I could almost see the mechanism of his brain; so torrid and so very dark. I do wonder Miss Ives if you really ever understood or even realised the depth of love he has for you; he will always have for only you. To say that I love you means nothing beside his, it would be but a mere drop in the eternal ocean of utter love that he still feels and will, I know, as certain as the sun will rise in the east, always have. I feared not only for his emotional self but his physical being. For night’s I followed him silently, secretly shadowing his footsteps unable to do more than watch as he tried over and over again to destroy, obliterate both himself and the pain that was like another corruption in his very soul. I admit feeling despair that he would ever be able to find any solace other than in death and yet of course you, in your wisdom, in your love, left him salvation; left him an angel.

To be in the same room as Miss Mina is like being in the presence of something holy. I have never, in all the days I have walked this cold earth encountered one with such a pure soul and loving heart. She is the epitome of you and yet she is also utterly her father’s daughter with his easy charm and deep abiding loyalty. To see them together is a privilege and at times leaves me breathless to be party to the complete love that exists between them. She and she alone, gives him reason to keep breathing and he provides her with the stability that was so long lacking in her life. My only regret is that I never saw the three of you together, although in every exchange between them, every look, every touch, your very presence shines out of them like a beacon. But even in the face of such love, such strength I cannot help but fear for them. Without you will they have the fortitude to face what I see lies ahead in the shadows, can they resist the dark forces I see still swirling ever present around them?

And then Alice and dear little Amy. With Mina they make a formidable trinity, I have never felt such power even in my long life time as when the three of them are together and yet they are even now so untested, so untried despite their battle with, and defeat of the bitch Hecate. I feel the conflict in them, their inner struggle as they question their ability to exist without you, their true mother. Alice, despite her brittle façade of sass and swagger, continues daily to fight her inner demons of self-loathing and guilt but it is not her I fear for most. Amy so child-like and yet her innocence is impure, tainted and it is for her my very soul bleeds and it is for her that I can envisage an eternity of damnation without your teaching, without your protection. And yet I must believe, I have to believe that you knew what you were doing as you took that final step into the unknown. 

I swore to you that I would protect them, all of them, your legacy, the physical manifestation of your love for the world and to this I stand ever true. Despite the heaviness of this burden you, my beloved Miss Ives bestowed upon me, I will sacrifice my very soul, my hearts blood in that service. My misgivings and fears will not weaken my physical strength or my emotional stamina. My debt to you will only be paid when I see your family, the family that you, in that moment of ultimate sacrifice gifted into my care and which I will struggle until my last breath to keep safe.

I hope wherever you are that you have found the peace you so deserve that was so lacking in your long life. I still struggle with the idea that you are gone but although your physical presence is no longer part of this world, I still feel you in every atom of the mansion, in every word and action between those you left behind and, in some strange way, this soothes my torn soul. 

Know that the chessboard is set, the pieces are in play and I will, to the best of my ability, attempt to guide them to eternal victory.

To try to express in my own words how I miss you is impossible and therefore I leave you now, my dearest Miss Ives with the words of one who can express in only lines what it would take me tomes.

 

Time's sea hath been five years at its slow ebb,  
Long hours have to and fro let creep the sand,  
Since I was tangled in thy beauty's web,  
And snared by the ungloving of thine hand.  
And yet I never look on midnight sky,  
But I behold thine eyes' well memory'd light;  
I cannot look upon the rose's dye,  
But to thy cheek my soul doth take its flight.  
I cannot look on any budding flower,  
But my fond ear, in fancy at thy lips  
And hearkening for a love-sound, doth devour  
Its sweets in the wrong sense: -- Thou dost eclipse  
Every delight with sweet remembering,  
And grief unto my darling joys dost bring.

Written equally with love and grief,

John.

**Author's Note:**

> The poem is - Sonnet. To A Lady Seen For A Few Moments At Vauxhall by John Keats


End file.
